AliceFraser
patreon
Another Month, another Country
🕑 Added 2017-10-05 18:50:11 +0000 UTC I am in L.A at the moment. After having returned briefly to Sydney to hang out with dad and sleep in the empty shell of my family home (dad is selling up, so the house was being painted and floored and all that pre-sale stuff), I have flown to America for the L.A Podfest.This trip was paid for out of the AMP Tomorrow Fund grant which I was given to help Tea With Alice get over here. It’s an incredible privilege and one that I am grateful for.
My Podcast is an odd beast - deliberately so. I want to talk about complicated things, demonstrate how to feel your way through a difficult conversation, be undecided and uncertain but also engaging and interesting. That’s not something that’s super marketable. Sometimes I feel like it’s not something that can be done well, or by me. Other times I’m very happy, though never satisfied.
Part of the problem with ambition or drive or whatever it is that makes you keep striving for things is that urge can never really be fulfilled. It’s that horizon that moves as you approach it, and a downside of that is it’s hard to really *feel* successes. Also Comedy/writing doesn’t have promotions built in, so you kind of have to set your own measures of progress. This grant was definitely one.
Coming to LA, chasing guests for my podcast becomes the new goal - making interesting people interested in my stuff. But the new goal can erase the old goal, and I want to remind myself that being here is already a massive deal.
LA is a very strange city - the air feels strange, and then you remember that it’s basically a desert, despite the fact that there are buildings and roads and cars (so many cars) on it.
Every person you meet talks about chasing their dream, and having an open heart and gratitude. They also talk about guns and fear and the healthcare system and how unstable it is being outside the traditional system here, where most people’s health insurance is tied to their employment. Taking a risk here is much more of a risk than in Australia or the U.K. it becomes more existential, which is maybe why they talk about it in such spiritual terms.
For me it feels more pragmatic, this then that, then the next thing. But it’s worth feeling the LA style ‘blessing’ once in a while.
Like doing a slightly less than perfect show at the end of your run, or running just under your PB after months of training. It’s a nice thing to take time to remember on a really basic level that my “almost good enough” now is better than my absolute best would have been a few years ago.
After three years of podcasting, I have built up an incredible audience, a set of skills, refined my understanding of people, my own ways of thinking, my own mistakes.
Not that progress is linear necessarily; especially in the modern world, being stationary can feel like going backwards.
Do you have moments like that?
Comments
Don’t be apprehensive. I’m incredibly pleased when people take the time to talk to me, and the upside of always buzzing around doing things is that I have time in transit and between places to read and respond to stuff. I’m at a really lucky point in my career (if it’s linear) where I get feedback but my audience is limited and specialised and narrow enough that it’s mostly positive, properly engaged and human. Further down the line, if my work gets more mainstreamed I anticipate more of that nasty filler bullshit. But for now, I get to look forward to reading my comments and contacts with no dread at all. Not a privilege I take for granted at all. Actually... this is an interesting thing. I might write up a piece or talk about it on the pod. Thanks!
Hi Joe - Thankyou for this. It means a lot when people extend a thought like this! Doing podcasts can feel a lot like putting stuff out into the void (specially as I refuse to check my subscriber numbers), so it’s really lovely to hear back. I’m really glad you find use in my podcast and that you enjoy it. I’ll keep trying to make and improve what I do, and I hope you keep enjoying it! A P.s Medical stuff is tedious and awful, and only becomes even vaguely bearable in light of the alternate universe where it’s not available or accessible. We have a long way to go in so many areas of human enterprise and I hope the medical stuff that’s helping you is in a rapidly expanding, well funded field. Xx
